Question

Read the excerpt from the US Supreme court case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Answer 1

The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was unconstitutional because since segregation laws did not provide equal protections or liberties to non-whites, the ruling was not consistent with the 14th Amendment.

In Plessy v. Ferguson's case in 1896, America's Supreme Court established that as long as there was equality, racially separated facilities were not unconstitutional. According to the Court, segregation did not discriminate.

But actually, the separate facilities granted to African Americans were infrequently equal. Normally they were far from being equal, or were completely inexistent.

Distribution of education budget in Florida, for example, was extremely different depending on the race: whereas white people counted on a budget  of over 70 million dolars for their schools, libraries, and more, black people counted on a budget of less than 5 million. They teached and learned in churchs, huts, and shelters without bathrooms, water supply, desks or chalkboards.

This principle of "separate but equal" was only employed to reaffirm white majority supremacy over black minority, and was eventually abandoned in 1954.